Employ out of work Coal Minors making parts for wind and solar plants (lord knows they've got the skills), prevent Trump & the GOP from using them as a prop in elections, boost the economy when we're going into a recession and clean the air. Four birds, one stone.
Seriously folks, we're all huddling down bracing for a recession like a bunch of cats in a thunderstorm. Why the hell don't we actually do something about it for a change? This isn't hard. We know exactly what to do. Regulate Wall Street to prevent them from gambling with our cash, do a big stimulus with a big payoff (like when we built the highways) and maybe throw in Medicare for All and the $5 trilling in savings every 10 years that comes from that. It's not Rocket Surgery.
it's been around for ages. It's also, if the 97% of climate scientists are to be believed, necessary if we're not going to have mass disasters, drought and food shortages in the next 20 years. The oil companies knew about this since the 70s. Seriously, google it. Instead of fixing it so we had renewables (which would devalue the resource they own) they spent billions burying it.
AOC isn't a dingbat. She's young, and occasionally makes mistakes, but at her core she knows what's going on and what we need to do about it. And as for ideas penned by a 12 year old, dude, look at Bush Jr. Two fucking terms. Look at how Clinton addressed towns. Look at what happened to Obama every time he talked to the electorate like an adult. Remember "You didn't build it?". That was a)not exactly what he said and b) true. Almost cost him the election as folks went nuts because they didn't understand the difference between "You didn't build the roads you use to get to your little business" and "You never did anything worthwhile in your whole live you god damned loser"...
You can't talk to the electorate as a whole as if they're intelligent. What's the old line? A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals.
bills like this are specifically to soak up (there's a pun there somewhere) folks put out of work in coal and oil.
Natural gas is pretty much eating those sectors alive. Yeah, we need oil to move cars & planes, but we're not using it for electricity anymore. Same for coal. And electric cars are getting damn good. They're still expensive, but cars are rapidly getting too expensive anyway...
The green new deal is how the Democrats plan to respond to the GOP's "Clean Coal" nonsense where they promise the coal minors their jobs back. The GOP is lying, but the minors will vote GOP because a promise is still better than Hilary's policy of "Fuck you, go back to college, and no, I won't pay for your tuition".
TL;DR; put out of work folks to work building wind and solar plants. Kill two birds with one stone.
for lots of folks. Eventually self driving cars will take over. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when traffic violations of all sorts just go away.
Long story short it's a symptom of Tough on Crime Laws and police militarization that's created an "Us vs Them" mentality. The Drug War hurts a lot too since a large percentage of folks smoke pot or know someone who does and that means you're always scared shitless when a cops around since they can arrest you and take your stuff.
The solution's easy: Stop Voting for Tough on Crime politicians, end the Drug war and stop civil asset forfeiture (which was created for the Drug War anyway). There's a few other odds and ends we can do (California has an anti-speed trap law, and properly funding your police so they're not dependent on civil asset forfeiture is a good start) too.
the King didn't need the peasants to buy his product. He just owned everything and the peasants did as they were told. We're returning to monarchy, we've just changed the names from Kings, Queens and Duke/Duchess to CEO/CFO and principle shareholder.
not compared to the profits let alone the cost of running a government and associated services. If google can get out of paying taxes for fines they're way, way ahead.
You're dead right about trickle down economics. Here in the states we changed the name to "Job Creators" and that stuck. Never underestimate the power of think tanks & focus groups.
it's only a measurement of power past the point where you can spend it. Until then it's a means to the end of obtaining the goods and services needed to live a nice life.
a. They only invest when the probability of a big payout is high or when it's guaranteed (often by the government in the form of bail outs).
b. They use the losses to offset taxes paid on the wins.
c. If all else fails they game the system. Like art dealers, where they buy a painting for $1 million, then another from the same artist for $2 million, declare demand for the paintings makes them worth $10 million each, donate them to a gallery and write off $20 million on their taxes for a net of $4-6 million. If you ever wondered where ridiculously overpriced art came from this is it.
The system isn't broken, this is how it was built to work, and folks like you let it be built that way because of blind faith in capitalism.
As for who that money should go to, how about the people who earned it? e.g. the working class.
the power is diluted drastically. That's because you're mostly spending on necessities (food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation and communications). In other words, you're not in a stronger bargaining position by making purchases since were going to make those purchases anyway. Not so for the ultra rich.
Yeah, the Clinton's suck eggs and you'll never go broke hating on them. But buying competitors rules. Again, you can count on the working class to need certain things. You can buy your competitors and jack up prices. If all else fails you liquidate your purchase like they did with Sears and then stick the government with the debt from pensions and the like. It's a win-win.
have too much money. So every time a competitor arises they just get bought out or buried.
Once you've got more money than you can spend that's not money anymore, it's power. Folks figured this out in the 50s, 60s and 70s and reigned it in with high taxes and a ton of Wall Street regulations. Then Reagan came along and shit all over that. Clinton didn't help either.
didn't spend a dime of his own money and got through the primary. The key is:
a. use New Media (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
b. Rely on old media's insatiable need for content.
c. Never, never, _never_ apologize for _anything_. On the Internet if you back peddle for second they eat you alive.
and other forms of new media. The Internet's made telecom so cheap I don't need the AP to tell me what to think anymore. Trump did it. Alexandria Ocassio Cortez is doing it now (it's why the mega corps are so scared of her).
just refuse to vote for politicians who accept corporate PAC money. Look, right here's a wing of the Democratic party that does just that. They're looking to primary the corporate, Clintonion Democrats next election too.
I'm open to hearing a GOP equivalent but, well, I don't know any. Maybe folks like that jump ship to the libertarian party, IDK. Doesn't matter.
Refuse to vote for anyone who takes corporate PAC money. And vote in your primary. Your vote has orders of magnitude more power in a primary. Politicians don't fear being reelected. They _do_ fear being primaried. Show up and give'em something to be scared of again.
and he's the one doing the insulting. It became really clear that nobody was actually listening to him when the stock market stopped responding to his tweets.
There's only two things his tariffs have really gone after: Steel & Soybeans. As for steel a big supporter/donor of his owns steel mills, hence the steel tariffs.
I haven't figured out the grift on soybeans yet, but I suspect somebody on this forum can find it for us and post below.
this is kind of a sticking point for me. Not that I care much for Communism (you never get past the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" phase, too much violence and property changing hands there) but China is a basic Kleptocracy. They govern not on the principles laid out in the works of Karl Marx but on making money for the folks in power and keeping those folks in power.
The US isn't far off from being the same but we're teetering on the edge right now and can go either way. I think 2020 is going to be the tipping point, I just don't know which way we'll tip.
the rules were put in place because wealthy land owners were afraid the working class would vote themselves land. There were a mountain of voter suppression tools in place back then. Unless you were wealthy, landowning and white you probably couldn't vote.
_Women_ like having and raising children. Most men are pretty indifferent to the whole thing. Many are hostile to it.
Proclaiming you don't want kids is pretty taboo in virtually all cultures. You're labeled as selfish and there's the risk that when you screw up (pun not intended) and have one anyway the kid will find out they're not wanted.
For the childless it's kind of annoying to be constantly subsidizing kids an getting nothing for it. Now, if you're planning to retire you need those kids to work and grow the economy for your 401k and pension. The problem with that is practically nobody has pensions, raiding pension accounts is a popular pass time for venture capitalists (I'm looking at you Sears) and even 401ks are basically worthless for 80% of the population ( in low tier jobs they get eaten up by fees).
What I'm saying is that if you want to get support for investing in children you need to make sure the benefits are spread all over. As it stands they're just cheap labor I'm gonna compete against in my 50s.
male birth control is coming soon (stop snickering there in the back rows). Assuming religious objections don't derail it expect to see a huge population crash. 60% of pregnancies are unplanned. I grew up with lower working class guys and trust me, they'll take their pill.
Hell,I had a close friend try and get a vasectomy in the 90s and no doc would do it. He ended up with a kid he didn't want. Vasectomies are reversible now (mostly) so if he did the same thing today he'd have no problems.
Basically, people, especially men, won't breed uncontrollably if they have options, and baring a regression they're going to have those options.
I got dragged downtown for Jury duty this last month and the air downtown was horrible. I'm not out in the country or anything but even I could tell you don't want to be breathing that crap. Meanwhile I drive an old car (mid 90s, 2008 market crash was not kind to me) and it keeps passing emissions. The only saving grace is I don't drive much.
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It's billion year old dead dinosaurs.
Employ out of work Coal Minors making parts for wind and solar plants (lord knows they've got the skills), prevent Trump & the GOP from using them as a prop in elections, boost the economy when we're going into a recession and clean the air. Four birds, one stone.
Seriously folks, we're all huddling down bracing for a recession like a bunch of cats in a thunderstorm. Why the hell don't we actually do something about it for a change? This isn't hard. We know exactly what to do. Regulate Wall Street to prevent them from gambling with our cash, do a big stimulus with a big payoff (like when we built the highways) and maybe throw in Medicare for All and the $5 trilling in savings every 10 years that comes from that. It's not Rocket Surgery.
it's been around for ages. It's also, if the 97% of climate scientists are to be believed, necessary if we're not going to have mass disasters, drought and food shortages in the next 20 years. The oil companies knew about this since the 70s. Seriously, google it. Instead of fixing it so we had renewables (which would devalue the resource they own) they spent billions burying it.
AOC isn't a dingbat. She's young, and occasionally makes mistakes, but at her core she knows what's going on and what we need to do about it. And as for ideas penned by a 12 year old, dude, look at Bush Jr. Two fucking terms. Look at how Clinton addressed towns. Look at what happened to Obama every time he talked to the electorate like an adult. Remember "You didn't build it?". That was a)not exactly what he said and b) true. Almost cost him the election as folks went nuts because they didn't understand the difference between "You didn't build the roads you use to get to your little business" and "You never did anything worthwhile in your whole live you god damned loser"...
You can't talk to the electorate as a whole as if they're intelligent. What's the old line? A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals.
bills like this are specifically to soak up (there's a pun there somewhere) folks put out of work in coal and oil.
Natural gas is pretty much eating those sectors alive. Yeah, we need oil to move cars & planes, but we're not using it for electricity anymore. Same for coal. And electric cars are getting damn good. They're still expensive, but cars are rapidly getting too expensive anyway...
The green new deal is how the Democrats plan to respond to the GOP's "Clean Coal" nonsense where they promise the coal minors their jobs back. The GOP is lying, but the minors will vote GOP because a promise is still better than Hilary's policy of "Fuck you, go back to college, and no, I won't pay for your tuition".
TL;DR; put out of work folks to work building wind and solar plants. Kill two birds with one stone.
for lots of folks. Eventually self driving cars will take over. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when traffic violations of all sorts just go away.
on YouTube.
Long story short it's a symptom of Tough on Crime Laws and police militarization that's created an "Us vs Them" mentality. The Drug War hurts a lot too since a large percentage of folks smoke pot or know someone who does and that means you're always scared shitless when a cops around since they can arrest you and take your stuff.
The solution's easy: Stop Voting for Tough on Crime politicians, end the Drug war and stop civil asset forfeiture (which was created for the Drug War anyway). There's a few other odds and ends we can do (California has an anti-speed trap law, and properly funding your police so they're not dependent on civil asset forfeiture is a good start) too.
the King didn't need the peasants to buy his product. He just owned everything and the peasants did as they were told. We're returning to monarchy, we've just changed the names from Kings, Queens and Duke/Duchess to CEO/CFO and principle shareholder.
not compared to the profits let alone the cost of running a government and associated services. If google can get out of paying taxes for fines they're way, way ahead.
You're dead right about trickle down economics. Here in the states we changed the name to "Job Creators" and that stuck. Never underestimate the power of think tanks & focus groups.
it's only a measurement of power past the point where you can spend it. Until then it's a means to the end of obtaining the goods and services needed to live a nice life.
there is zero actual risk. That's because:
a. They only invest when the probability of a big payout is high or when it's guaranteed (often by the government in the form of bail outs).
b. They use the losses to offset taxes paid on the wins.
c. If all else fails they game the system. Like art dealers, where they buy a painting for $1 million, then another from the same artist for $2 million, declare demand for the paintings makes them worth $10 million each, donate them to a gallery and write off $20 million on their taxes for a net of $4-6 million. If you ever wondered where ridiculously overpriced art came from this is it.
The system isn't broken, this is how it was built to work, and folks like you let it be built that way because of blind faith in capitalism.
As for who that money should go to, how about the people who earned it? e.g. the working class.
the power is diluted drastically. That's because you're mostly spending on necessities (food, housing, healthcare, education, transportation and communications). In other words, you're not in a stronger bargaining position by making purchases since were going to make those purchases anyway. Not so for the ultra rich.
Yeah, the Clinton's suck eggs and you'll never go broke hating on them. But buying competitors rules. Again, you can count on the working class to need certain things. You can buy your competitors and jack up prices. If all else fails you liquidate your purchase like they did with Sears and then stick the government with the debt from pensions and the like. It's a win-win.
have too much money. So every time a competitor arises they just get bought out or buried.
Once you've got more money than you can spend that's not money anymore, it's power. Folks figured this out in the 50s, 60s and 70s and reigned it in with high taxes and a ton of Wall Street regulations. Then Reagan came along and shit all over that. Clinton didn't help either.
didn't spend a dime of his own money and got through the primary. The key is:
a. use New Media (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
b. Rely on old media's insatiable need for content.
c. Never, never, _never_ apologize for _anything_. On the Internet if you back peddle for second they eat you alive.
and other forms of new media. The Internet's made telecom so cheap I don't need the AP to tell me what to think anymore. Trump did it. Alexandria Ocassio Cortez is doing it now (it's why the mega corps are so scared of her).
also good luck buying a PS3 gamepad online.
just refuse to vote for politicians who accept corporate PAC money. Look, right here's a wing of the Democratic party that does just that. They're looking to primary the corporate, Clintonion Democrats next election too.
I'm open to hearing a GOP equivalent but, well, I don't know any. Maybe folks like that jump ship to the libertarian party, IDK. Doesn't matter.
Refuse to vote for anyone who takes corporate PAC money. And vote in your primary. Your vote has orders of magnitude more power in a primary. Politicians don't fear being reelected. They _do_ fear being primaried. Show up and give'em something to be scared of again.
but if I had to make a wild guess I'd say it lets them offload some of the database processing to external "nodes", e.g. to another company.
Think about how much computer time costs for a large database. Now imagine if you could shift that cost to somebody else...
Most stuff is and then at best it's assembled in the country to avoid tariffs. Kudos to them if they can do it though.
and he's the one doing the insulting. It became really clear that nobody was actually listening to him when the stock market stopped responding to his tweets.
There's only two things his tariffs have really gone after: Steel & Soybeans. As for steel a big supporter/donor of his owns steel mills, hence the steel tariffs.
I haven't figured out the grift on soybeans yet, but I suspect somebody on this forum can find it for us and post below.
this is kind of a sticking point for me. Not that I care much for Communism (you never get past the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" phase, too much violence and property changing hands there) but China is a basic Kleptocracy. They govern not on the principles laid out in the works of Karl Marx but on making money for the folks in power and keeping those folks in power.
The US isn't far off from being the same but we're teetering on the edge right now and can go either way. I think 2020 is going to be the tipping point, I just don't know which way we'll tip.
the rules were put in place because wealthy land owners were afraid the working class would vote themselves land. There were a mountain of voter suppression tools in place back then. Unless you were wealthy, landowning and white you probably couldn't vote.
New radios will make me upgrade if they give me better range/signal.
_Women_ like having and raising children. Most men are pretty indifferent to the whole thing. Many are hostile to it.
Proclaiming you don't want kids is pretty taboo in virtually all cultures. You're labeled as selfish and there's the risk that when you screw up (pun not intended) and have one anyway the kid will find out they're not wanted.
For the childless it's kind of annoying to be constantly subsidizing kids an getting nothing for it. Now, if you're planning to retire you need those kids to work and grow the economy for your 401k and pension. The problem with that is practically nobody has pensions, raiding pension accounts is a popular pass time for venture capitalists (I'm looking at you Sears) and even 401ks are basically worthless for 80% of the population ( in low tier jobs they get eaten up by fees).
What I'm saying is that if you want to get support for investing in children you need to make sure the benefits are spread all over. As it stands they're just cheap labor I'm gonna compete against in my 50s.
male birth control is coming soon (stop snickering there in the back rows). Assuming religious objections don't derail it expect to see a huge population crash. 60% of pregnancies are unplanned. I grew up with lower working class guys and trust me, they'll take their pill.
Hell,I had a close friend try and get a vasectomy in the 90s and no doc would do it. He ended up with a kid he didn't want. Vasectomies are reversible now (mostly) so if he did the same thing today he'd have no problems.
Basically, people, especially men, won't breed uncontrollably if they have options, and baring a regression they're going to have those options.
I got dragged downtown for Jury duty this last month and the air downtown was horrible. I'm not out in the country or anything but even I could tell you don't want to be breathing that crap. Meanwhile I drive an old car (mid 90s, 2008 market crash was not kind to me) and it keeps passing emissions. The only saving grace is I don't drive much.